A League of Their Own: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little loan, fascinating facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more. We are your Lords of the Lowdown. My name is Jordan run Tug, and today we're talking about one of the greatest baseball movies of all time, A League of their Own, which turns thirty years old this very month. And there's also a new miniseries inspired by the classic films set the premiere on Amazon later this summer. And you know, I'm sure it'll be great. It's got Abbie Jacobson in the lead and Nick Offerman in the crotchetty Tom Hanks role. But come on, it's a League of their Own. Homages are nice, but it will never be topped. Incredible true story, plot, great message, absurd cast. Where else can you get rosy O'donald Madonna, Bill Pullman, Lori Petty, John Lovett's Gary Marshall wiki from Laverne and Shirley. Tom Hanks our first of I guess it doesn't really count as a Hanks connection when he's in the movie, But is this the first actual Hanks movie we've done think so yeah, and of course a fresh off Thelman, Louise Gina Davis, good Lord, incredible cast. I grew up with this movie, so it's impossible for me not to be biased. But Heigel, you in fact saw this movie for the very first time the other day, so I'm excited to get your your take and your thoughts. Yeah, I mean it's just such a First of all, I'm not a baseball guy. I find baseball to be a general anesthetic, but um, that's why I played it. It's the most standing around. Yeah, I I I can't do it. I can't do it. I mean, my dad is very good about like, here's the mechanics of every sport, so you won't like embarrass yourself. So I was never I don't have any like traumatic baseball experiences, like being embarrassed Jim class or any of that. But I just I can't. But you know, I do have a delight for well crafted, mid budget studio movie from the nineties, and this sure is that, man. I mean, you know, we find out new in different ways in which Disney is flattening out the cinematic landscape of everything every day, And yeah, I mean, this is just one of those movies you don't really see that much anymore. Like we were talking about in the Jerry McGuire episode. It it's like a mid level quality movie with a good cast and a good story that's not a tiny indie movie or a Marvel movie. You're absolutely right, Yeah, but you so you you like baseball movies. Yeah, I actually played baseball. I was not very sporty kid, but baseball was the one sport I did play. And I was a pitcher because I could just stand there and throw things and that was great. I didn't have to run and be fast and that was special. Umball, Well, I actually I I retired early from baseball in eighth grade after I hit a kid. Um you were like Randy Johnson and the bird exactly, and I felt so add that I basically from that day all my heart wasn't in it. But I do love baseball movies, and to me, A League of their Own is a highlight in this golden era for baseball movies. Um. For symmetry sake, I'll say that this golden era starts and ends with Kevin Costner, first with Bull Durham and then obviously feel the dreams, which customers also in the following year, and it ends in with the truly Terrible for love of the game. But in between those years, you've got Major League, you've got a Little Big League, you've got Rookie of the Year, you've got Angels in the outfield, and of course the Sandlot, which we should absolutely do on here a sap. But the only one of these I give a about it. Actually, Oh, come on, I'll Wreaki of the Years a classic I think I saw, which is one where the kid breaks his army. Yeah, yeah, I mean I was a picture so clearly. Yeah, but none know, those movies packed the emotional punch of illegal their own, at least for my money. Even the slogans so great a woman's places in the home first, second, and third aremendous tagline. Yeah, so let's get to it. From the grueling audition process that was really more like a sports tryout, to the rough and tumble shoot that resulted in some fairly major injuries, to the missing romantic subplot left on the cutting room floor and the time Madonna piste off an entire town, and of course the famous claim that there is no crying in baseball. Which we have found to be patently untrue, but we'll get to that. Here is everything you didn't know about A League of their Own. Now, before the movie A League of their Own, there was the documentary League of their Own. Director Penny Marshall was inspired to make this movie after seeing a short TV documentary that aired on a PBS station in Los Angeles, and it was about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, which existed between nineteen forty three and nineteen fifty four, and Penny was blown away by the story of a female baseball league that she never heard of, and she said in a two thousand five master class, I didn't even know it existed. And if I didn't know, that means other people didn't know. And I was going to change that. So she sought out the documentary's co creators, woman named Kim Wilson and a man named Kelly Kendall, whose mother and aunt had been players in this league. So you have two sisters playing in a baseball league. The seeds of the plot are taking root, uh and their documentary had basically been a proof of concept for a feature film. So these people were extremely happy when Penny Marshall reached out and invited them to her birthday party at her house, and Kendale later said, all of a sudden, I'm out a birthday party with Bruce Willis and Demi Moore and John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts who happened to be there. All of a sudden, I'm hanging out by the pool with Robert de Niro and Penny's movie star friends. So thanks are looking up for these two, Kim Wilson and Kenny Kendali, and they wind up with a story credit on the feature film, which makes sense considering it's basically their mother's personal street. Yeah, Kelly has a pretty wild CV. His documentaries oscillated between um bone, serious political things and sports. Uh. He has one about assassinated Swedish Prime Minister olof Palme, the ira A ceasefire of nine, then the soccer rivalry between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, uh, some Indians soccer teams, the construction of the Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown l A. And he is also an adjunct philosophy professor at cal State Chico. So obviously this movie is based on a true story and was most people's first introduction to the All American Girls Professional Baseball League certainly was mine. The league was devised in late nineteen forty two by chewing gum magnet and Major League Baseball executive Philip K. Wrigley, yes the man behind Wrigley Field, and he reasoned that the outbreak of World War Two would drastically impact professional baseball because of the draft, so he planned to create a new league with women who played amateur softball. And the film is extremely accurate in many of its details. The Rockford Peaches, which is the main team in the league of their own, was a real team, and it was one of fifteen in this league, which also included such empowering team names as the Kalamazoo Lassies, the Chicago Colleens, and the Grand Rapids Chicks. I tried to look up if Colleen's was like a flapper term or something that's an Irish term for girl. I think it means girl in Gaelic. I think, huh, Well, I learned something today, A man learned a lot today. But you know, we're just gonna start a baby. Players on these teams were subjected to rules that, as is often the case, most definitely did not apply to their mail calendar parts. If these women were caught smoking, drinking, wearing pants and public, or even venturing out without makeup in public, they were subjected to fines. And also they had to play in skirts, which we'll talk about later, which resulted in serious injuries. Think about it, sliding into bases. Not good. They were also sent to the Helena Rubinstein beauty salon and given makeovers and forced to attempt charm school classes where they were taught proper etiquette, hygiene and dress codes. I just I I googled that woman. I was like, man, you can throw in something about her her stories bananas. I will just say that she's a four ft one Polish immigrant and launched a cosmetics empire in America. And the quote that I found that led off the top result for her was all the American women had purple noses and gray lips and their faces were chalk white from terrible powder. I recognized that the United States could be my life's work. That's cosmetics magnate Helena Rubinstein folks a lot of magnates. In this story. You got regularly that word yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah. The plot of a league of their own hinges on the relationship between sisters Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller, and naturally has ties to filmmaker Kelly Candale. We're just gonna go with Condale. I'm sorry if I'm saying I'm wrong. Whose aunt and mother helped in Are the League of their own documentary that he'd made. But his mother was an outfielder and his aunt was a second baseman, and their positions were changed in the script because, as he said, there's a lot more potential for conflict and a dramatic arc by making the characters a picture and a catcher. There in the line of site the director gage with one another. It's great. So the character Dottie Hinson was inspired by a real life woman named Dorothy Dottie cannon Check, who played for the real Rockford Peaches, and while the fictional Dottie retired after just one season, the real life camon Check was a seven time All Star and two time batting Champion and holds the A A G P b L, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League's record for career hits. And the real life Dottie had a really tremendous quote in Marquete magazine. She said in the beginning, we were only getting five people in the stands, and then it got up to ten thousand. Eventually we won them over. At first they just came to see the skirts, and then we showed them we could play, and damn they could. And the real players from this league are actually featured in the opening scene of A League of their Own, when the former members of the league are gathering at the opening of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Because remember the movie starts in present day and then the majority of its told in flashback, and most of the extra scene exploring the museum and the exhibits about all the female baseball players from the forties are actually the women who were there, which is so cool. And many of them were consulted on the League of their Own script and offer their own memories and insights, and I just think that's so cool. They were really heavily involved. I just wanna start calling it. Yeah that acronym, yeah A A G B A A G P B L. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to nail that, but there, Oh, I'm gonna mix my sports menta force. Here there was a flag on the play or you don't have flags on the plays in baseball? Right? I don't think so. For all the feminist themes of the movie, there are dissenting notes from one of the founders of MS magazine, just caused to stand up and pay attention. A woman named Brenda Feigen wrote in her memoir that Penny Marshall stole the idea for a league of their own from her. She has a book called Not One of the Boys, Living Life as a Feminist, and she writes, the world may think that Penny Marshall is thoughtful on women's issues, but in reality, she screwed another woman, just the way the worst male directors do. I wasn't able to find anything else about that, you know, specifically, um anyway, moving on, uh, speaking of other things that were stolen, possibly in a much nicer way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The screenwriters stole a pretty great line from a pretty great writer's mom. I guess you want to say. I cannot believe this guy's name is real. Screenwriter Baba Loo Mandel sounds like an old timey boxer, and Lowell Gans were the ones responsible for the script. They also worked on splash spies like Us Parenthood, City Slickers one and two Multiplicity and friend of program at TV. Despite being described as nerdy baseball junkies, neither of them had ever heard of A and Uh. As they were writing the script, Baba Loo visited his mother at her apartment building in Sherman Oates, which coincidentally happened to be the same building that the mother of playwright Neil Simon lived at. Even non theater nerds will probably recognize Neil Simon is one of the greatest playwrights to ever live. He wrote The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, Barefoot in the Park. He's hilarious. He's one of the people that made me want to be a writer and go to screenwriting school. Like all my early plays that are out in high school where like direct rip offs of Neil Samazon. I mean, he wrote The Odd Couple and then that got done to the TV show. He's hysterical. Yeah, he's He's so good and that legacy loomed large over his little brother because when Baba Loo ran into Neil Simon's mom in the lobby of the apartment building, she was with her non Neil Simon's son, and she introduced herself and introduced the other son by saying, and this is Neil Simon's brother, which is a line that is such a fantastic burn that they wrote it into the script. When kids says to Dotty, do you ever hear Dad introduce us to people? This is our daughter Dotty, and this is our other daughter, Dottie's sister. This is also a great Neil Simon line to like, that's something that would have been in like The Odd Couple. Yeah, exactly. So this movie was actually held up in the fond term for you know, limbo in Hollywood development hell for a few years while Penny Marshall finished up Awakenings with Robin friend of the program, Robin Williams um keep using that throughout This is my only contribution to this episode. The head of Twenties Century Fox tried to take it away from her and gave it to Hoosiers director David and Spog. Then they realized that that was a bad move, and they withdrew funding just weeks before the movie was sent to begin filming with him in June, which is the move. Yeah, So Columbia ultimately picked up the movie and Penny Marshall regained her rightful place as director. How did they how did they find the team for this? You may ask, Well, approximately two thousand women took part in auditions for a league of their own at one of USC's baseball fields. Leah Thompson showed up, as did Paula pound Stone, probably for the Rosy Roll and a pre Trump Marla Maples, among many others. Yes, just those four, um, But Penny was looking for more than just good acting performances. She wanted actresses who looked believable as ballplayers. And apparently this was harder than you might think. Producer your name Robert green Hunt from the film told ESPN w in we all quickly learned how hard it is to throw from first base to third to get someone out. So Penny Marshall held a massive audition that doubled as a team try out, where actors were judged on running, catching and hitting. And as a result, there were plenty of big names who were just qualified because they just couldn't hack it. One a lister who Penny diplomatically declined to name, it up to the audition wearing ballet slippers. That's incredible. I love to know who that was. As for all my sports cluelessness. I can't say I ever showed up to play baseball and ballets flats. Um fair Faucet wanted to take part and was apparently actually physically able to play the game, but according to Penny Marshall, was slightly too old. MAURICEA. Tomay filmed her audition being coached by Joe Pesci on the set of My Cousin Vinny, which rules, Yeah, I want to see that audition tape. Oh yeah, is that floating around? I haven't been able to believe me. I looked I was gonna say, yeah, if you can send that to us, we'll send you five bucks. Um. She also didn't make the cut, and then a number of other women actually trained with a baseball coach at St. John's College just for the audition. Um Madonna Joan Jet which I want to see that de Me Moore, Ali Shedy Brookshields and Uma Thurman. Um Jordan just wrote Penny Marshall's Daughter spat Blood, which is a want to act feminist play that I will be debuting. I'm not known from my economy with words, but this time I think I nailed it. One of the women who auditioned was Penny Marshall's daughter, Tracy Reyner, because she and Rob Ryner were married all throughout the seventies, which I completely forgot. What a TV power couple. Yeah, Rob Ryner and all in the family. He had Penny Marshall on Laverne and Shirley, and then in the eighties you get all the Rob Ryner movies when Harry met Sally spinal Tap and then all the great Penny Marshall stuff awakenings leading their own Good Lord, what a couple. But I think they were done by the time this movie was casting, and the fruit of their loins went to audition with her cousin, despite the fact that she was still recovering from getting her wisdom teeth removed. Oh, she probably should have waited a little longer on that, because she popped her stitches in the middle of the tryout audition. Its spat blood all over the field. That is a grim visual. When she arrived home, she assumed that her mother Penny would be proud of her gumption, and instead Pen he said, how did you end up testing the top twenty girls? Ouch? But the coach was impressed with her arm and ultimately she was cast as Betty Spaghetti Horne, who's the outfielder, the woman who learns that her husband George has been killed in action via that the Western Union Telegram, kid Um, And this is how people actually learned that their loved ones had been killed in World War two. Hey, you just got a note of regret from the Army Adjudant General with brief presumably mostly redacted facts about the death. And it was until the Vietnam War that you start getting the I think what's more in pop culture, people coming with people are Yeah, what people think of the in the movies and TV when people somberly come to the door in the dress uniform and you know, deliver the bad news. H On a lighter note, we've only got good news coming because we've got Gina Davis to talk about. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with were too much information after these messages. Jenny davis Is audition for the role of Catcher Dottie Hinson was a bit more of a personal affair as opposed to the cat call at USC that's what they call those big auditions. I'm not being horrible. It took place in pay Marshall's own backyard and It was also a great deal shorter than the other auditions to GENA recalled in USA today, And I threw the ball to where competently got it to her. She caught it and said, okay, that was the whole audition. Uh. Though she was tall, I guess she's like six ft tall. She hadn't really played sports growing up, and she would later say, I was always so tall and awkward. I assumed I was uncoordinated. That audition changed my life. I was learning how to play a sport. And the coaches on the set of a league of their own told her, you know, you have real untapped athletic ability. And this was a real lightbulb moment for and she actually followed through with this. She took up archery after a league of their own wrapped, and went on to compete in the US Olympic Trials in archery while wearing her pink Rockford Peach uniform from a league of their own. Ye, she's an amazing archer. There's like YouTube videos of her doing all these trick shots and stuff. It's really cool. I don't think I'm trick shots. It's the pool thing, but it's still it's really cool. She told people in People magazine in I found a coach and became utterly obsessed. It became my life for a couple of years. She was practicing five hours a day, six days a week, and after just six months of this intensive regiment, she became the surprise winner of a string of local, national, and international tournaments, and she missed out of qualifying. She finished twenty four in the trials, but she did score a wild card birth at the Sydney International Golden Arrow petition. She's incredibly talented and she was very anxious to get this role in the league of their own because she had just completed Thelma and Louise and wanted another role where she wasn't just mean to be blunt, really pretty, uh. She told espn W. I've always sought characters that got to do interesting things from a selfish point of view. As an actor, I didn't just want to be the girlfriend of the person who's having all the interesting things happened to them. And this is the ultimate example of that. I bring it up when I give speeches because I say I would rather play the baseball player than the girlfriend of the baseball player. And I'm lucky that I had the opportunity to do that, and she really went the extra mile during this train and she also did some of her own stunts. Most memorably, she did the splits when catching a pop fly. I was a bit of a photo op early in the league's history when they were struggling to attract an audience, and Gina told USA Today, Penny asked if I could do a split, and I said to put it later in the shooting schedule to give me time to work up to it. They had a stunt doubles be the one who actually slid into the split, but the split itself was done by Gina herself, who admitted that she needed help getting back up. She also did the trick catch behind your back at the home plate. There was a stunt woman who was supposed to do it, and the stunt woman couldn't nail it, so I guess they got Gina to do it herself, just learned it on the spot. So I can do you ever see that? Now? You wouldn't have seen this. Somebody answer this question for myself. On Your Behalf Alien Resurrection, the fourth film in the Alien series, Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley again, who died in the third one, but she is cloned and brought back and now she's part alien and as part of the like, wow, she's part alien so she can do like super human stuff. She does this like she's playing basketball against Ron Perlman, who is this space pirate. It's a weird movie. She shoots a basketball behind her back, like blind from like half court and made it. Oh, I've seen that clip, but I didn't know where it was from. And it's Ron. It's Ron Pearlman's reaction. He's like he looks like a child at Christmas, like face like lights up because she actually made it. I love it. How many did that take? You think? I think he was the first one, you know, I don't know, Maybe I'm maybe I just wanted to be so much, but yeah, that's his real genuine reaction to the film. Um. Yeah, we mentioned Demi Moore earlier, and I mean, it's funny be considering how much Gina Davis crushed it. But to me, Moore was Penny Marshall's first choice for this. She would have been coming off of ghosts Um at the time and all the brat Peck stuff. But yeah, so when Fox is back, when Fox wanted Hoosiers director David Anspog to direct the movie, Yes This Thing On. He wanted Sean Young from Blade Runner, Dune, Wall Street and Ace Ventura, but by the time Penny Marshall came back on board, Demi Moore was pregnant and had to drop out of the role because it was an extremely physical one and, as Penny later wrote inimitably in her two thousand twelve memoir My Mother Was Nuts, Bruce Willis literally screwed her out of the part, which that is a borched belt. Penny Marshall. Then Penny tried to get Deborah Winger, who spent three months training with the Chicago Cubs to prepare for this, and then subsequently backed out after learning that Madonna was involved in the film, which I love. Winger felt like this was stunt casting, and she said that she felt it was shaping up to be quote an Elvis film, which I think does a disservice to a number of of US's films. So she walked, exercising her pay or play clause for the first and only time in her career. Um Jordan, what's a pair play clause? When't you tell the folks at home? I mean the short version is that you if you leave, you get paid anyway. So she basically got paid her fee, basically millions of dollars for doing nothing. But despite this financial windfall, she couldn't resist a few digs against the cast of a league of their own. Over twenty five years later, Yeah, she told the Telegraph in one that she felt Madonna and the other leading ladies didn't train as hard as they should have to make a legitimate looking baseball movie. Quote as entertaining as the final film was, you don't walk away going Wow, those women did that? You, Debra Winger. People broke fingers to make this movie. Quote you kind of go? Is that true? She did allow that Gina Davis did okay, and that she certainly doesn't begrudge any of the actors. But of Madonna's performance, I think her acting career has spoken for itself. I guess some last bits of fantasy casting. Laura Dern was considered for the role Dotti Hinson, which I could see, as was Jennifer Jason Lee, Ali Sheety and Kelly McGillis. Oh yeah, we mentioned Lori Petty earlier. This is probably the best I've I think I've ever seen her in what else was she and she was in sometimes we talked about Yeah, tank Car for is such a ridiculous character, and even in Orange Andley Black, she's just kind of like manic. But she's so good in this The underdog's underdog in this movie. And fittingly, she auditioned a whopping eight times to get this part, which compare and contrast with Penny Marshall just asking Gina Davis to throw a ball in her backyard. Petty told the Ringer in every woman in Hollywood was reading for this movie. It was a strong female movie, which you know we don't have now and didn't have either. I mean, Marla Maples auditioned for Christ's sake, everyone. I mean, I do love the unnecessary shots across the bow of Marla Maples. Marla Maples like she didn't suffer enough. The producers originally had cast actress Moira Kelly later of One Tree Hill, but she broke her foot during the production of the ice skating film The Cutting Edge. Molly Ringwald was also before they went with Lori Petty because she had been a serious ballplayer since childhood and was the only girl on a boy's team. Growing up, she told the ringer. We had to throw and catch and hit and stuff, so you'd see all these movie stars up there. But you can't teach a grown woman or a grown man how to throw a ball properly. You really need to have grown up doing it. So I was super blessed that I played ball. But you know, the sibling rivalry stuff kind of bled over into real life, she told people earlier this year. Honestly, it was not difficult to look up at this glamorous Academy Award winning movie star and conjure up sisterly jealousy and adoration and feeling looked over. But she said with a laugh. So Laurie Petty saying this, yeah, but it must have infuriated Lori Petty in this scene when she and Jean and Davis are racing at the top of the movie, because Lori Petty was actually a much faster runner but had to slow it down for the shoot. And so. Another key figure in the movie is Alter Harvey, who is the candy mogul the bank rolls the league, and he is based on the league's the real life founder Philip K. Wrigley namesake of Wrigley Field and Rigley Gum. They changed that to candy bars for the movie for I don't know legal reasons. Uh, Penny initially wanted Christopher walk into my League founder Walter Harvey, which could God, I love Christopher Walking as much as the next guy. Presumably Gary Oldman wasn't available. Yeah, what an energy would have brought to that movie. Oh my god, maybe she has had a thing for like extremely New York people, because walkins like a native New Yorker. Oh yeah, maybe. I guess we'll get to this later. But Rosie o'donald's part was supposed to be a lot smaller, but they gave her more scenes because I guess Rosie was the only one who could understand what Penny Marshall was saying because of a really thick bronx accent. Yeah, so so Rosie, another Outer Borough woman, was able to sort of decipher that for the rest of the cast. I guess Walking came with two high a price tag because she brought your brother Gary Marshall for cheap. Hey, you want to play second banana to uh Christopher Walkin. God, that's gotta hurt. We couldn't get Walking, so we got you to save money. We created like Happy Days and Lavernon Shirley. Right, you did, all right, But he's no Christopher Morcan. Mindy. I think, God, what an insane number of shows that's spun off a Happy Days total sidebar. But well, actually not a total sidebar, because Penny Marshall actually snuck in some of her Lavern and Shirley co stars to yes into a League of their own. I mean, I'm a child of the Nick Knight era. I watched that lineup religiously all the time. Lavernon Shirley was one of my favorite shows. I knew Penny Marshall first and foremost as Laverne de Fazio from Lavern and Shirley, had a huge crush on Shirley, loved Cindy Williams. Yeah yeah. Penny placed a few of her ex cast mates from Lavern and Shirley in the League of their Own. David Lander, who played Squiggy on the series as one of the game announcers, and she also cost Eddie Mecca, who played Shirley's on again, off again boyfriend Carmine on the TV series. Uh, he's the soldier who spent an evening dancing with Madonna's character may Um. I think he just died recently. Oh, I don't know. I never watched that show now once. Anyway, while we're on the topic of characters inspired by real life figures like Gary Marshall's characters, Watch Hanks, watch yess here we go, this brings us to Jimmy Doogan. The coach of the Rockford Peaches, is said to be based on two early Major League Baseball icons whose careers were unfortunately sidelines by alcoholism, Jimmy Fox who's incredibly named UH and Hack Wilson. And when the film was still in development at Fox, Jim Belushi was in line to play Jimmy Dougan, but Hank's petition to get the role from his old friend Penny Marshall, who directed him in Big, which was a crucial turning point in han His acting career UH, taking him from the small screen bosom buddies to you know, decent roles. But unfortunately, at this point in the early nineties, Hanks's career had really, for probably the one and only time, hit the skids after a pair of flops The Bourbs and Joe Versus the Volcano, Penny was really worried about casting him because this character was supposed to be a past at ball player who was in his fifties, and Hanks was I think barely into his thirties, so ultimately they made the character younger, but to make Hanks less darnlikable to audiences, he agreed to put on thirty pounds, which is a feat he accomplished by visiting a nearby dairy queen while filming fairly religiously, and he told Entertainment tonight, I had barbecue pork ribs and enjoyed the desserts of America. Um. Meanwhile, Penny told Rosey O'Donnell to eat as little as possible. Oh uh. And in this episode's edition of It Longs in the Museum, the uniform that Tom Hanks wears in this film was sold at auction in for seventeen thousand, seven hundred and thirty two dollars and forty cents. Pretty good, Pretty good now. One of the most memorable moments with Jimmy Doogan is his introduction to the team when he drunkenly stumbles into the locker room and peas for an unnaturally long length of time, approximately fifty three seconds in fact, but rest assured folks, he is not actually peeing. The scene is accomplished with movie magic, although extremely low budget movie magic. Penny Marshall stood just off camera with a hose in a bucket to simulate the sound, and she didn't tell Hanks when he was gonna be done either, so she he just had to sort of go with it. So for all of our Hanks connections that we've had throughout this show, uh, there was one that I actually have with Hanks said, I don't think I've ever told you, hi, because you're springing. This is the one you promised to spring on me. So yeah, I always thought it was too crude and never really had a reason to bring it up on this But now we're talking about Hanks peeing. There's really there's probably no better opportunity in the world from me to bring this up. I actually pete next to Tom Hanks when I was a little boy at a urinal in Los Angeles. Was he cool? Yeah? I mean I was ten. It was the Stables Center. What were you seeing? The Stables Center? Figure skating Christi Amagucci and um I think Michelle Kawan. Yes, Pete to Tom Hanks. That was my big, big claim to fame. Okay, I have to say it was tough. I mean, that Thing You Do and Apollo thirteen were like my two favorite movies at that time. So it was actually really hard to be chill at a urnal, which probably at that point was rare for me anyway. Usually I was a stall boy. Um. Yeah, Tom Hanks washed his hands. That's really all information I can give anyway. Moving on. Uh, but you know what you didn't do it that urnal was cry This brings us to the famous line they're still crying in baseball. There's no crystal ball, no crying on the a f I I think one of the fi top on. Oh deservedly so one of the biggest catchphrases in cinema history. And the screenwriters had no idea. They had no idea they were pending a classic. Screenwriter Loegance has said the idea was to show the disconnect that the cultures were completely different between men and women in the way they played the game, and the line was president in the first draft, long before Hanks was cast. It was just, you know, kind of a tossed off line. I guess the cast also didn't have any inkling that the scene would live in infamy either. Gina Davis told USA Today in we knew it was hella funny, but I didn't know it was going to be a classic line. That's a signature right up there with the Leavista baby. She's from Massachusetts. What is she saying hell for? I? Oh, yeah, that's that's that's very strange to me. And that's like that's a NorCal thing too, That's not even like a Hollywood thing. The actors. Biddy Shram, who played right fielder Evelyn Gardner who's the object of Hanks's rage in this scene, says that she can't watch the scene because she can tell her makeup was still smudged from crying during previous takes. She said, it made me nauseous. All I could see is, oh, they picked the take where I look like I was crying before, or Tom was great, but look at my double chin. That's all I can think about when I see that scene. It's a shame because it's a classic scene. But you know what turns out there actually is crying in baseball. Just a few years before the film was set in three, Luke Garrett gave his famous farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in nine and he cried there. Kirby Puckett and Bill Mazerowski cried on the day that they were inducted into the Hall of Fame. Louise Tiant cried after Bucky hit his famous homer. Mike Schmidt cried when he retired. Mike Hampton cried when he was honored as the Houston Astro's m v P. Cal Ripken cried when he broke lou Garreg's fifty six year old record for consecutive games played two thousand, one hundred and thirty. Iron Man Baby and uh Wilmur Flores visibly wept in the middle of a game and twenty after hearing he had been traded by the New York Mets. This turned out to be false, but the moment went viral anyway and became a fan favorite because it was so sweet that he felt that emotional the connection to his team. So anyway, Jimmy Dugan was wrong. There is crying in baseball. We have no segway for this. G like Madonna? Do you like Huey Lewis the News? Do you like Madonna? Um? I like early stuff through to probably like a prayer, Borderlines an incredible song. I find that like, that's actually one of my favorite pop songs of all time. All the all the early stuff is great. Yeah. I actually I have a soft spot for a Vita. Believe it or not, I bet you do. Yeah, yeah, um, I hate but Donna she's a hack. She's like David Bowie in the sense of being a vampire of people around her. But instead of making incredible, indelible music, she makes dog really well. You don't think that she was good until falling off around like American Life in the two thousands of a Bond themes, she was good until then. Okay, no Ray of Light was good, but I guess that was kind of like Beautiful Stranger. Beautiful Strangers so good, like like nineties psychedelia, like garbage. I hate all that. Oh my god. No, No, I don't like her. I get that she's like important or groundbreaking or whatever, but I just find her so obnoxious. Man, every single thing about her is artificial And yeah, alright, so so you're not Madonna fan. Not We've cut just ten minutes of higel of sanity laden rant about life, filtered bile against Madonna, but you know, funny enough to think about. In the review Mirror at the time, our beloved Hank's stature was completely eclipsed by Madonna. You know, all four of her studio albums had gone multi platinum by the early nineties, but her film career was not exactly keeping pace with that. She had appeared in famous flops like Dick Tracy, Desperately Seeking Susan, which I actually like a lot as um and Shanghai Surprise, which is as a Sean penn one right uh and produced by my beloved George Harrison right. And when casting was underway for A League of their own in one Columbia, executive told the l A Times, there's still some dispute about whether she's a movie star, so it was so catty. But even so, she was desperate to snag a role in the film as a way of diversifying her filmography. Producer Robert green Hut even told her, you know, this is very little money, but she took like, you know, we can't turn down Madonna, but do we really want Madonna? And she took her role of dancer turn center, feedl may morete Vito all the way may very seriously. According to producers, she trained with everyone else during the weeks of the arduous rehearsals and training. She learned how to slide into third base by using a slipping slide toy, which we will come back to you later. The one thing that she couldn't master that was fielding grounders like Bill Buckner from Boston about that, that, oh man, so they moved into outfield. She was originally playing third base. So funny that the like one of the six sports references I have in my pocket, is a direct shot at the very fiber of your being. But other than that, she did not get superstar treatment and has been called a trooper by members of the crew. Green Hut said she took it seriously. She might have come in late a few times, and maybe I had to bring her to the principal's office kind of thing, But ultimately she was a sweetheart. She was just so enthusiastic about doing a good job. Even Laurie Petty, who was coming from a place of authority when it comes to sports skills, said, I've never met anybody who works harder in my life. For real, she would get up and run six miles before work when we're already going to be outside running and sweating and dying. Yeah, she really really gives it all, so that was very impressive. The cast was understandably starstruck. Petty told the ringer that she was such a big star inwo that we were like, what are we even supposed to call her? You can't call her Madonna? That's like calling her the Empire State Building. And even Penny Marshall said, uh, I couldn't get the word Madonna out, so she resorted to referring to Madonna and rose O'Donnell as rowan Mo. Madge apparently dried her best to be approachable, even inviting the cast to her house for her birthday party where she made homemade Brace Crispy treats, but there were moments when Madonna was perhaps less than friendly. She apparently refused to sign autographs during production and was so rude to the citizens of Evansville, Indiana, where the World Series finale was filmed, that the town still hates her, and I guess she hates them right back, because she had a famous quote where she compared it to Soviet era Prague because she couldn't get MTV at the house she was staying in at the time, and things got so bad. This whole kerfuffle over this that three hundred citizens laid on their backs in the parking lot of a local stadium and spelled out Madonna with a strike through. One of the quotes that I found from a resident who appeared as extra in the movie said, I found her to be unpleasant and arrogant much of the time. You gotta wonder about the wording of that, like pretty nice the rest of the time, though, Um God, this is awful. She wrote a letter to a friend who was a photographer named Steven Meisel, with whom she must have had some kind of falling out because he made this public. And is I mean, there's no reason you would release this letter other than to make Madonna look bad. It really in part I cannot suffer any more than I have in the past month learning how to play baseball with a bunch of girls. Yuck in Chicago, double yuck. I have a tan, I'm dirty all day, and I hardly ever wear makeup. Gina Davis is a Barbie doll, and when God decided where the beautiful men were going to live in the world, he did not choose Chicago. That's a pretty good line. I should have say that for the lyrics. Um quote I have made a few friends, but they are athletes, not actresses. They have nothing on the House of Extravaganza. I wish I could come to New York. Lastly, Madonna was paired with Rosie O'donnald throughout the film and their relationship uh it's fun. It's one of the better pairings in the film. And it's translated so well because Rosie was the only person who wasn't having any of Madonna's Uh. During downtime during filming, when they were at the stadium and the extras were just like broasting under the hot stun hundred degrees in the bleachers, Rosie would come out and sing Madonna's songs to them in front of Madonna. Megan Kavanaugh, who plays Marla Hooch, said Rosie was not afraid of Madonna. She did what she wanted to do, and I think Madonna loved that. Rosie would sing all of Holiday and Madonna would get mad at her and say, don't ever sing one of my songs again, And the next day she'd come out and sing Vogue. It was so fun to watch or do that. I love that Rosie took an active interest in the welfare of the extras in the stands. She persuaded the production company to hire a stand up comic friend of hers to perform for the extras in between takes to keep them happy. And while we're on the topic of things that the stars did to amuse the little people, Hanks apparently did puppet shows from the Dugout. Yeah, I know, right, what do you think he did Punch and Judy. I really love it if he was into some kind of niche puppetry like Balanie's Shadow puppets, or like, like he's like Malkovich doing the John cusack and uh being John b Akovich with the like insane all four limbed marionette thing. It's like the Lion King on Broadway. Yeah, and Gina Davis led the cast through songs from Jesus Christ Superstar. And while we're on the topic of Rosie o'donald, Jordan's tell us about Rosie O'donald's I forgot our character's name. Halfway through that, Jordan tell us about Marla. No, Jordan tell us about is her name? I got it? I got it. Don't don't help me, don't help me. Yes, Rosie Odonald's character Doris Murphy bouncer turned ballplayer was written especially for her because Rosie originally auditioned for the character of Marla Hooch but lost out when casting directors found Megan Kavanaugh, who was just perfect for that role. I mean, no one, no notes, no one else could have done that better. So instead they invented, or at least tailored this character of Doris for Rosie to bring her comedic talents to the movie. And we met you this earlier. According to Rosie, at least her part was supposed to be much smaller than was ultimately filmed, but Penny Marshall supposedly gave her extra scenes because she was the only person on the set, another Outer Borough lady who could decipher her thick bronx accent, so I guess Penny liked having her around. Um. Now, the players in this movie probably could have played a major league game by the time the shoot had wrapped. They apparently trained eight hours a day, six days a week for this is the figure I saw seven and a half months. So Deborah Winger saying, no, they didn't train hard enough. Screw you. That's insane. That's that's like, that's really nuts. And even when they were on the set. They were instructed to play real baseball games in the background so they could film b role in addition to you know, acting as a good way for the group to bond. Temperatures were upwards of ninety degrees during most of these game days, and the women were forced to wear ara specific uniforms made of wool, which was really hot. Plus, they couldn't use batting gloves because they didn't exist in the forties, and instead of using modern, relatively comfy based all mits, they used old air specific unwebbed mits, which made everything a lot more dangerous because they were harder to use to catch stuff. And for close ups when they were hitting balls into the direction of the camera crew, they use soft balls that had like a spongy center so that the camera people didn't get beamed or that be really expensive cameras didn't get damaged. But for the rest of the movie it was the real deal. They were using real balls, and this had dire consequences sometimes. About two weeks before filming was set to start and Ramsey, who played first base woman Helen Haley, was injured when a ball hit her in the face. She told espnW it was the first day that we switched from modern day mits to authentic vintage mits from the forties. The coach throws me the ball and maybe the fourth time you threw it, it just slips and hits me. They took me to the hospital and they had to reset it, and my nose has not been the same since. But who cares, she says, And apparently Penny Marshall told her that if her nose didn't look great after the reset, they were just going to write that injury into the script, but thankfully it never came to that. That was not the only injury on the set. Laurie Petty claims that she broke her foot while filming, and Penny Marshall recalls her filming scenes while wearing a cast and rosey O'donnald played with broken fingers. And that's not all. I mentioned earlier that the women trained to slide into bases by using suburban slipping slides, but when they got out onto the field, it was a bit tougher because at the top of the episode they were playing in skirts, which are not exactly conducive to sliding. In fact, in real life and in the movie, these outfits often left legs bruised and bleeding. Again. This is because in real life, the uniforms were designed by Wrigley's art designer, ODIs Shepherd, who was a guy better equipped to design gum rappers rather than sports safety gear. So these atoms were designed to look good but not very practical. Uh So, the crew tried to teach the players to slide on slipping slides, but not one but two cast members and I've also seen possibly as many as three suffered concussions after crashing into each other while sliding. Megan Kavanaugh and Tracy Reiner were the ones I was able to nail down. And then there's a scene in the movie when one of the players, Alice Gaspers, has this grotesque, horrendous bruise that's being photographed in the team dug out. Uh, that's real. That was an actual consequence of sliding into third base in a skirt. And Tracy Reyner later told ESPN W and that was real. There was not one pinch of makeup. She had that bruise for like ten years and yeah it looks I know, I yeah, it's pretty horrendous. I have not seen this movie in a long time and have a vivid memory of them icing that, yeah, yeah, it's gruesome. It's pretty gruesome. So yeah these again, Debor Winger, screw you. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. I can't believe we made it this far in this episode without talking about one of my favorite characters from this movie, the loudmouth, sarcastic baseball scout named Ernie Cappadino, played by the inimitable John Lovetts. The part was written specifically for him, and he modeled his looking wardrobe after his own grandfather. And uh, you'll remember he comes to the family barn to recruit Dotty, only to find that she's going about her farm chores and there's a cow in the background, moving loudly and generally causing a ruckus as he's making his pitch to Dottie to join the baseball league, and ultimately he screams at the cow, will you shut up? And that line of guests was ad libbed. Um. Apparently the cow was giving birth at that moment that the scene was being filmed, and the cow's owners ended up naming the calf Penny after Penny Marshall. Which I love. Many of John Lovett's lines in this movie were ad libbed, including the bit where he leaves Dottie, Kit and Marla at the tryouts, saying that he was going home to give his wife. I can't bring myself to say this, but I guess I have to a little pickle tickle. I hate that. I don't find that funny at all. But Laurie Petty might have found it funny because she told Vulture that she had to bite her tongue to avoid laughing at scenes with Lovetts, and ultimately she caused herself to bleed because she was stifling her laugh so hard. Um. Originally, loves His part was supposed to be a lot bigger, with scenes that weren't purely comic, but they were cut during the lengthy trimming process of this movie, which we'll talk about in a minute when it's run time was basically halved, and it was cut because test audiences responded so well to John Lovis's characters one liners that Penny Marshall basically trimmed out everything that wasn't jokes and essential plot points, and Lovitz was understandably upset by this, and he complained to Penny Marshall about all these scenes getting cut, and she responded by saying, you're in the film just enough. It's just it's to be. I guess he's more of a spice than a main chorus. I suppose that's such a great shootdown. You're in the film the right right exactly. I love this detail. I guess when John Lovitz found out that Madonna had checked into their hotel under a pseudonym, he registered under one to the pseudonym was Edna, who add not a very highly developed sense of humor here, but he did one thing, and he did it well. Speaking of things that got left on the cutting room floor, not much in the initial cut of this movie. Four hours long? How do you even do that? How do you turn in a major studio film it's four hours long? Yeah? I don't understand how this was a lot to happen, because scripts, I mean scripts give you a pretty decent idea of how long a movie is going to be. It's like roughly a minute of page. So yeah, I don't really understand. Maybe they did a lot of rewrites and additions on the fly, but good god, four hours to get down to a much more manageable two hours eight minutes. For the theatrical release, Marshall had to cut a hell of a lot of stuff and even a few subplots. One of these is an extended version of the scene at the subs Bucket. Just such a delightful scene. I actually love that scene, which is about that the team sneaks out to visit poisoning their chaperone if I recall, right, I know. Also we need talk about this. I love this scorn with which they treat that child like Angel what was his name? Yeah, yeah, Angel, Wilmur's Wilmer Angel or something like that. Oh Man. In the cut scenes, Jimmy Dugan shows up and helps talk Kick through a bet that she made with this Towney, which is if he can get a hit off of one of her pitches, he gets a few minutes alone with her in his truck. Gross but probably era appropriate. Also, there was a whole plot line related to the SuDS Bucket scene about Marla getting married to the man she meets at the roadhouse and getting pregnant, and then, not wishing to jeopardize her ball playing career, she keeps it a secret from management, and then a player slides into a base that she's guarding on a double play, and she's carried out on a stretcher. Uh, so understandable why they cut that one. Yeah, yeah, I didn't remove every trace of it because the scene when Bob comes back and surprises Dottie if she's sitting in the bed crying, and that was apparently because she was still rattled from that moment. I don't think they ever explained why she's actually crying in the movie. No, they don't. Yeah, that's that's why we haven't actually mentioned this guy, Bob, who is Dottie's husband, who is in He's kind of a non character really, he is is serving and comes home wounded towards like the final third of the movie. It's so wise that they cast Pullman because he's so like pleasantly inoffensive that he is the perfect emblematic stereotype of this like midwestern nothing guy. You know, he's so incredibly forgettable in this movie, Like I mean, yeah, probably by the sign. Yeah, it's a skill. And so there was another scene that was cut of Dottie talking to Kit and she is explaining Madonna's character's nickname. The Madonna's character's name is may More to beato and her nickname is May All the Way, which is a fun slut shaming nickname. And so Dottie is explaining to Kit why she's a bad influence with loose morals. Uh. She tells Kit that sex should come after marriage and it is more of an obligation than something that people do for fun, which again ever appropriate but also very weird. And if you are interested in that, you can see them on the DVD and or Blu ray releases. Speaking of Dottie and romance and sizzling sexual chemistry. You know, the Hanks Davis, we didn't talk about this, so there's a lot of spoken there's a lot of heat. There's such a great arc that the two of them have, Dottie and Dugan Davis Hanks. They gradually begin to respect each other a little bit more. Their relationship changes that he has that lovely speech where he talks about, you know, he would give anything to get just one minute of his playing years back, and she's gonna throw that all away. Um. But in the original cut of the movie, the four hour Marshall cut, as I've decided to call it just now, they kiss and this happens after Dottie watches Jimmy at batting practice and he goes to kiss her and she's not having it, and that is supposedly the real reason that she quits the team, and their whole relationship is fleshed out so much more in this cut um and all this cut scenes. She apparently married him the night he got drafted. Are married married her husband? Yeah, married Bob Bill Pullman the night he got drafted, which is I guess maybe kind of some kind of dog whistle that their relationship is one of the obligation or you know, I just watched The Hours and there's that whole speech in the Hour is about that Julian Moore gives about like it kind of gets it this weird thing about like she says, she's talking to uh Toni Collette's character the neighbor, and she's like, you know, our husband's like, don't they deserve this after everything that they did and came home And it's like there's an interesting dimension there about whether or not she feels obligated to marry him. I don't know anyway, So that makes her bond with Dugan based on the love of the game maybe a little as a new dimension to that. But according to Megan Kavanaugh, the actress, the scene was cut because quote, it was very upsetting to the real women players. Apparently, Davis's character was married and it upset these players that she would kiss another man while her husband was at war. But ultimately, I think we both agree that the lack of the romantic subplot adds to the overall tone of the movie because it keeps the focus on the players. It keeps the focus on the game, doesn't Yeah, exactly, you draw You draw the comparison to Legally Blonde, where they had a big, old cliche kiss moment at the end, and they cut it so that they can focus on, you know, her achievements in law school. So right decision, I think. But ultimately I would still watch for that four hour cut. And this brings us finally to the end of the movie. And for a brief plot recap Kit and Dottie. Kit has been traded to a different team and so those teams are now playing each other in the World Series, and Kit is racing towards home Plate with the World Series on the line. Dottie is at home Plate as the catcher, waiting to be thrown the ball to tag her sister out, and you know, the conflict comes together in a tremendously literal way with kid crashing into Dottie at home plate and there's a very pointed shot of her hand hitting the ground while holding the ball, and the ball falls out of her hand, and so Kit wins the game, finally comes out of the shadow of her older sister for you know, for the first time in her life. And I just watched this, so it's very fresh in my mind, and that was the first thing that immediately leaked to my head was this is shot in such an interesting way that it allows you to bring whatever interpretation that you want to it. And that's what's so nice about the writing of it as well, because they never telegraph that in the any of their interactions after that, about whether or not she intentionally dropped it or if it actually fell out of her hand. Authentically, they don't force it, they don't overplay it. It's just it's a beautiful little moment of ambiguity. Um. And because we can't have nice things, people have spent the intervening thirty years trying to force an answer there. Um. You can fall on the camp that Dottie drops the ball on purpose, knowing that she's going to leave the league to return to her life with as you call him, boring Bob, while she knows that Kit presumably wants to continue her athletic career and has so much more at stake, So Dottie takes the proverbial dive so that her sister can be a hero. You can google this. There's so many articles that go into this. People have speculated that she had taken some time off from the league when Bob came back, so she was out of practice. Um. They put a lot of stock in the fact that she tells the picture beforehand to throw a fastball because Kit can't hit him, can't lay off him. Um. And there are even some who have put a lot of stock in the scene at the beginning of the movie where her grandkids are playing basketball in the driveway and she first says to the older one, now, remember, no matter what your brother does, he's littler than you are. Give him a chance to shoot, and then sato voice, she says to the younger one, kill him. So I mentioned earlier seconds ago, Even that I think the film plays is very ambiguous. What do you think? Yeah, I mean that moment when she tells the picture to throw a fastball because she can't hit him and can't lay off of I mean, it seems like she wants to triumph over her sister have shared her Achilles heel if she didn't. Yeah, and that's kind of I actually really like that notion because then it it's I mean, you know, I'm in favor of the thunderdome, the sanctity of competition. So I love the idea that the women got so close to this, they love the game so much that they were like, well maybe maybe my sister, Yeah, but I don't know. That bit at the opening is interesting too, sort of gives the opposite theory because it's like, you know, all right, you're the older one, do you be cognizant of that? And then tell them the little one give it everything you got, showing no mercy and really pushing for like one to give them a platform. Yeah, that's an interesting Checkout's gun I gotta say. But you know, we're still talking about a thirty years later. The Internet still talking about it. The cast is also still talking about it. Lori Petty, who played Kit, is of course predictably offended by the notion of these theories. She says, they're insane. I kicked her ass um. Actor Biddy Shram, on the other hand, believes that Dottie did drop the ball on purpose, although he as the caveat. He said, I would say subconsciously yes, because Dottie knew how much more it meant to Kit, and she was too good of a player. But Gina Davis herself says she knows the answer and she ain't saying she told espnW. I'll say two things about that. Number One, I know the answer because it was me. Of course I know the answer. And number two, no, I'm not going to answer that question. I never have and I never will. So let's take this all the way back to old documentary and Kelly kenal A who co directed the Agapabla documentary on PBS that kicked off this whole thing. So his mother and his aunt were players in the league and crucial to the creation of the Dotty and Kit characters. So if anyone can shed some light on this situation, it's Kelly. And he said that while there were traces of sibling rivalry between them quote to some extent, he says that neither would ever throw a game. My mom would never have dropped the ball. Ever. I always tell people that. People say, oh, she did it on purpose, isn't that nice and sweet? She let her sister win. No one would do that. The betrayal of your own teammates, not to mention the betrayal of your own integrity. You ask yourself when I betray my teammates like that in a World Series game? So my Brady's sister could win? Ouch? I mean, it makes no sense. It absolutely makes no sense. Psychologically, it makes no sense. Morally, it makes no sense. It's condescending. If you knock someone over and knock the ball out, that's baseball. What do you think? I don't think she threw it. I really don't. I think it's so crucial to the film's theme that they found such a sense of identity and purpose and love of this game that they wouldn't compromise that for anything, and that it was a genuine moment of competition of sport. You know, do you like Huey Lessons? Um? Yeah, I mean I I don't know. I don't um. My sisters for years, younger, TH mean, we've never played sports or anything together, So there's a lot going there's I don't really have that dimension in into it, but um, yeah, I don't know what about you. I yeah, no, I completely agree with you to the point that I actually into researching for this episode. It had never even occurred to me that she would have dropped it on purpose. I always thought that she really did just drop it. Uh yeah, I just think because your commitment to the game was so total. Yeah, I just really was never something that occurred to me until until now. Well, um, I don't have a segue for that. Well, speaking of winning artists, one quite a bit, well, at least in the hearts and minds of movie lovers everywhere. Legallar made history upon its release on July one, becoming the first movie directed by Aman to gross over a hundred million dollars. While in theaters, it brought in a hundred and seven point five million ino and ultimately made over a hundred and thirty two million, and it's apparently the only baseball film to pass a hundred million dollars at the box office, which makes it the highest grossing film in the sub genre, out ranking Chadwick Boseman's forty two, Brad Pitt's Moneyball and many others that I mentioned at the top of the episode. But while the movies shot this, I'm kind of shocked. This a gross Field of Dreams. I was just thinking that, I mean, a look at their owns. I think is a lot more family friendly and just a lot more like I don't know, I remember watching The Field of Dreams as a kid and kind of being bored by it, whereas the League of their Own I thought was great. So I don't know, they probably just had more mass appeal. But while the movie seared, there was trouble on the horizon for a TV adaptation that came out a year after the film's release in Despite the love for the film, this did not translate to the small screen. The League of their Own TV show featured movie cast maas Magan Cavitall and Tracy Ryan and reprising their roles as Marla Hooge and Betty Spaghetti. But still m getting big time like aftermash vibes here, Yeah the show League of their Own. The TV show was not successful, and only five out of the six episodes were ever aired on CBS. So have you seen them? No? Maybe the Amazon mini series that's coming out later this year we'll do better. I hope it does. It seems to be shaping up to be pretty good. So a league of their own, delighted fans all over the world, and has inspired a generation of ball players sports fans. Is anyone really but perhaps most importantly the real life women who are honored in the film. We're really happy with the movie to the real life Dottie told espn W. When I saw the film, I thought to myself, that came out. Well, it was a shock see just how well it was doing. It's always one of the top sports movies of all time. It's exciting to have been part of something that struck a cultural nerve and lived on in people's minds. It seems like everybody still grows up having seen that movie. And thankfully Kelly Condale, the filmmaker who made the documentary that set the story in motion, he got to watch the film one time with his mother, who inspired the whole story, who was in the late stages of cancer by the time the movie had premiered. She would die of the year the movie came out, but they got to watch it together once and he said that she liked it. Obviously, it was just a bittersweet ear for me. I wish you could have been healthy, But at least she liked the movie. So it was a nice tribute there to his mother and all these women who you know, we said it so of the episode, we're really unsung. Very few people knew that this league existed, and um, I think now it's important to tell their story and inspire young girls who were just starting to get into the game themselves. Yeah. I mean, I think because of that, all the stuff that we talked about, like the cutting of the romantic subplot, that ambiguity about the dropping the ball thing, this movie four grounds the love of the game in a way that that movie called the Love of the Games could not. And um, that's like the most important thing that you can do in a sports movie, I think. I mean sports movies pun intended swing for the fences like all the time, but I think all the best ones really get at the heart of what it means to love something that intensely and give up so much of yourself to something, and to be able to do that in a way that shines light on the historical figures. To boot, it's a it's a triple double. How's that for seventeen mixed sports metaphors in a row. Suck it, other podcasters. Thanks for listening, folks. I'm Alex Eagle and I'm Jordan run Talk. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was the production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows